This invention relates to an apparatus for cutting tobacco leaves and, more particularly, to a cutting apparatus, which can cut a great quantity of continuously supplied tobacco leaves without stagnation.
As a method of efficiently taking out laminas of tobacco leaves by removing stems thereof, there is one, in which tobacco leaves are cut in the manner as shown in FIG. 1 and the cut pieces of tobacco leaves are sorted into pieces free from any stem portion a but consisting of the sole lamina and pieces c with a stem portion a, the stem portions a in the pieces being subsequently pulled apart.
To cut tobacco leaves by the method as shown in FIG. 1, two cutting apparatuses as shown in FIG. 2, for instance, are disposed at right angles to each other so that tobacco leaves are cut in one direction by one of the apparatuses and then cut in the perpendicular direction by the other apparatus.
The cutting apparatus shown in FIG. 2 has a supply belt conveyor e consisting of a plurality of narrow parallel endless belts. A row of lower rotary cutting blades f is disposed under a central portion of the upper run of the supply belt conveyor e such that the individual rotary cutting blades f partly project from between adjacent narrow endless belts. A row of upper rotary cutting blades g is disposed above the belt conveyor upper run such that the individual rotary cutting blades g overlap the corresponding upper rotary cutting blades f. With this apparatus, it often occurs that tobacco leaves having been cut by the blades are dragged into the space under the upper belt conveyor run from the point A at which the edge of the lower rotary cutting blades f crosses the upper belt conveyor run by the rotational force of the blades f. If this happens, it will cause jamming or otherwise disturb an orderly arranged state of tobacco leaves to disable continuous cutting thereof.
Accordingly, there has been proposed an apparatus as shown in FIG. 3 (which is disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,128,775 and 2,984,276). In this instance, a row of lower rotary cutting blades f and a row of upper rotary cutting blades g are disposed at a position slightly spaced apart from the head or tail of a supply belt conveyor e (which consists of a wide endless belt), and coupling members or guide members i are disposed between the set of lower and upper rotary cutting blades f and g and supply belt conveyor e. In this arrangement, however, the force of supplying tobacco leaves into between the lower and upper rotary cutting blades f and g or the force of bringing out cut tobacco leaves from between the blades f and g is rather weak and insufficient. Therefore, jamming or disturbance of the arrangement of tobacco leaves is liable to occur at a position before or after the set of the lower and upper rotary cutting blades f and g, thus disabling the continuous cutting operation.